Home Forums Birds & Dogs Waterfowl Weird year here....

My area of ND is usually pretty good for waterfowl. And things looked good, basically since spring. Good water, good rains all summer, birds everywhere. As the summer progressed, things started to skew. With all the rain, planting got put off until the last possible moment. Bird populations were good all summer and into the fall. Teal were everywhere. A few bigger ducks now and then. I usually don't hunt much early, and with all the standing crops everywhere, it limited the places I could go. So my plan was to wait, see how the harvest went and hit the birds hard later in the season. Well....harvest was way late this year. Into mid - October there were still soybeans in the fields. Still standing corn in places at the end of November. And then the temps dropped and the freeze-up began. Small water went quick, but the big water was just about as fast. Usually the birds will keep a hole open out on the big water until the snow makes it hard for them to find corn in the fields. This year the birds were gone before the harvest really got going. It was like they blew through without even stopping. Hopefully you guys are doing better.....

Kaiser Norton

Kaiser,
Did your season improve?
Western Oregon - or at least the places I hunt here- is having a very odd year. First, there was no rain. River at summer low levels all through December. We are still about 7" short of the usual rain we get from September 1. What ducks are here seem to be mostly holed up on the refuges. Very few in the river at all. Maybe it will end up like last year, a very late season.

ND was the worst I've seen it...

had about 2 weeks here. freeze,thaw, repeat. only open water was the river and that just doesn't hold them. got 2 geese 6 mallards, 1 green wing, and a dozen or so Gads.
every day seemed to be dedicated to one type! all mallards, or all gads etc.
strange year
hundreds of swans though.

Deerstalker
In my locale, historically the very best shooting is when all the surface water in the valley freezes. All the ducks pile into the river then and limits by 8am are not unusual. Unfortunately, this perfect storm doesn't happen every year.. this being one of the years it's not happening.
Here too though we have far more swans than usual.

Water was froze over as early as I can remember here. Didn't see the big migration either this fall. I don't hunt waterfowl until after October 15 to let them fatten up and lose pin feathers. With a late harvest and early freeze I never got a chance to hunt waterfowl this year.